In 2002, Cédric Pescia was 26 when he won the gold medal in the international competition of The Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation. It was the first and only competition Pescia, a dual citizen of France and Switzerland, in which he participated. He had shied away from the competitive performance arena, assuming that everyone else would be better than him but Klaus Hellwig, his teacher at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, finally persuaded him to give it a chance. “The reason why I chose Bachauer because at the time it was one of the only ones that gave me a free choice of deciding what to play in the program,” Pescia recalls in an interview with The Utah Review.

He took top honors with his performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-Flat Major, K. 271, also known as the Jeunehomme. “It was a turning point,” he says, adding that even a few days before the finals of the competition, he considered not coming to Salt Lake City.

Seventeen years later, Pescia says that he always looks
forward to coming to Salt Lake City. On March 8 at 7:30 p.m. in the Rose Wagner
Center for Performing Arts, he will perform a recital featuring cleverly
curated pairings of selections from both books of J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846–893,
which were composed 20 years apart (1722, 1742). The recital is part of Bachauer’s
current season with the theme of Bach,
Beethoven, Brahms … and Beyond.

Cedric Pescia. Credit: Uwe Neumann.

Pescia’s program is a unique offering. Other soloists for this season’s Bachauer series have selected programs that juxtapose classical piano music with works from the contemporary era. Many pianists, harpsichordists and organists have cultivated a worthy relationship with Bach’s music but Pescia strives for expanding the esoteric intellectual and musical connections with The Well-Tempered Clavier to an experience for the audience that can be as approachable, accessible and enlightening in deepening their own appreciation for Bach.

After he won the Bachauer gold medal, his debut recording in
2004 of Bach’s Goldberg Variations
earned praise in many reviews, an unconventional choice of repertoire perhaps but
one that now seems genius for an international artist emerging at the time.
However, it’s not that surprising given that it was one of Mozart’s earlier
piano concerti that set him on the gold medal path at Bachauer. In Colombia, he
performed the entire Bach’s The Art of the
Fugue, BWV 1080, for a mostly youthful audience of more than 1,000.

Pescia’s program represents an ambitious goal. The Well-Tempered Clavier is a major
pedagogical experience for keyboard players, much as aspiring actors might whet
their skills on Shakesperean plays or choral singers develop their skills in
singing Handel’s oratorio The Messiah.
In these two books, Bach has composed preludes and figures that explore the
spectrum of harmonic, stylistic and rhythmic differentiation.

Cedric Pescia. Credit: Uwe Neumann.

Pescia, whose latest recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier was released late last year, normally
might play the whole two-book set of 48 works over a series of two or three
concerts. In selecting the various pairs for the upcoming concert, he decided
to pick seven pairs of prelude-fugue selections (14 pieces in total) that
juxtapose different harmonic and stylistic elements. Therefore a cantabile or
choral style alternates with a dancing style piece. In each book, Bach composed
the pieces to climb the 12 semitones from C to B, and presenting a prelude and
fugue for each tone in the major and minor keys. The selections and how they
are presented, not necessarily in the sequential order or even chronologically in
terms of when they are composed, do not disturb the overall integrity or
cohesion of the entire work.

Pescia adds that audiences will be able to discern how Bach’s
composing voice matured over the course of the two decades that he took to
complete the work. It also gives audiences a new window into Bach’s creative
character. There always is the profound emphasis on his religious connections
and faith that propels his music. However, he also embodies a rich sense of
delight and entertainment even as the works demand intellectual concentration
that always has been celebrated as a genius hallmark of his creative output. Likewise,
Bach intended the work also as a technical primer. Four of his sons were
composers and musicians, including Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who wrote one of
the earliest and still relevant pedagogical books on piano playing technique
and execution.

Pescia cut his teeth on the music by listening to the
recordings by the late great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, long considered one
of the greatest interpreters of Bach’s keyboard music. “I discovered how
important this music was in my teens and early twenties but it always has
become even more important to me,” he adds. Pescia’s career encompasses a
diverse repertoire including Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Debussy, Busoni, Enescu,
Messiaen, Cage, Suslin and Gubaidulina.

Returning to Salt Lake City, one of his favorite activities is the chance to perform in schools, as part of Bachauer’s educational outreach programs. His parents were not musicians and he remembers how he discovered his love of playing the piano by listening to a musician in a live performance. “I always look forward to playing for students at school,” he says. “They don’t even need to have the best piano. It can be an upright.”

For more information about tickets and the remainder of Bachauer’s concert season, see the foundation’s web site.

I am a native of Toledo, Ohio, having received my Ph.D. in journalism and mass communication from Ohio University's Scripps School of Journalism in 2002. In addition to teaching at Utah State University and the University of Utah, I have worked extensively in public relations for a variety of organizations including a major metropolitan university, college of osteopathic medicine, and community college.
When it comes to intellectual curiosity, I venture into as many areas as possible, whether it’s about music criticism, the history of journalism, the practice of public relations in a Web 2.0 world and the soon-to-arrive Web 3.0 landscape, or how public debates are formed about many issues especially in the political arena.
As a Salt Lake City resident, I currently write and edit a blog called The Selective Echo that provides an entertaining, informative, and provocative look at Salt Lake City and its cosmopolitan best. I also have been the U.S. editorial advisor for an online publication Art Design Publicity based in The Netherlands.
And, I use social media tools such as Twitter for blogging, networking with journalists and experts, and staying current on the latest trends in culture and news. I also have been a regular monthly contributor to a Utah business magazine, and I have recently conducted a variety of editing projects involving authors and researchers throughout the country and the world, including Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Lebanon, Cyprus, the United Kingdom, France, and Japan. I’m also a classically trained musician who spent more than 15 years in a string quartet, being involved in more than 400 performances.